What’s the Difference Being Different?
First, welcome to Jannalou, a new member of the Autism Hub. One of the first post of her’s I read was Life as “Other” where she wrote:
I sometimes feel less than qualified to speak (or write) about disability; I mean, if I was able to grow up and turn out relatively well-adjusted without a diagnosis, am I really all that disabled?
Now, I just loved that because it resonates so completely… She continues:
All my life, I have known I was different. I used to come home from school and cry because I felt that I had no friends, I felt that nobody liked me (though I have realised that many people did actually like me when I was young), and I didn’t understand why I was so separate and cut off from the world I was a part of.
When you grow up “other”, as I did, you learn that “difficult” is just another word for “life”. And at first, you don’t realise that other people don’t have the same problems you do.
Life is just harder for those who are different. We think, for some reason, that it’s this hard for everyone. Except it isn’t. And when we realise that our lives are more difficult, that hurts. It hurts a lot. Because difficulties cost us opportunities and friendships and relationships and jobs.
Which is so true. But, when ‘different’ is all you know, it’s all that exists. But, we try, and when we realize that we have a voice, we begin to speak…
[FWIW: The title of this post comes from a John Hartford song]
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
May 15th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Thanks for the quote.
May 15th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
It’s an interesting topic. i sometimes wonder how the socially wired deal with social rejection growing up. Surely it’s so much worse since there’s a hard wired need built in so to speak for social acceptance. Not, mind you, that rejection is a stroll in the park for spectrumites, definitely not, but I wonder if a certain amount of social cluelessness isn’t actually protective. I never thought that rejection per se was the problem - active bullying was. Just my rambling thought for the day:)
May 15th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Jannalou, I’m glad it made it’s way back to you. I haven’t figured out how to do a trackback to a blogspot site.
May 15th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Alyric, I remember watching some of the social turmoils of the others in Jr. High and it seemed pretty pathos-ridden at the time. I didn’t feel too much empathy (over and above being Aspie) because they were in the same social circles that would ambush me after school and verbally and physically abuse me.
From my (egocentric) view the active bullying was worse. There was a boy a year older in my class (he repeated 4th grade) with very pronounced OCD and physical tics. My life was a bed of roses compared to his…